SIGGRAPH 98 History Project

Vol.32 No.3 August 1998
ACM SIGGRAPH

Computer Graphics Laboratories

Robert J.McDermottSIGGRAPH 98 Historic Laboratories Exhibit Chair

Computer graphics as a field has progressed from its early years as visual existence proofs by engineers, scientists and mathematicians to the present day of personal visual expression by designers, architects and artists. Today, we have researchers producing meaningful images and gaining insight into their abstract worlds, while artists produce art without the viewer needing to be concerned about the computerís role.

This exhibit provides a visual impression of contributions from computer graphics laboratories covering more than 25 years. Criteria for inclusion in this tribute are a balance of substance underlying the imagery combined with a striking visual impact. In addition, there is a balance of long-term sustained contributions with short-term focused contributions.

Robin Forrest, Jim Blinn and Pat Hanrahan, acting as the jury, were asked to select laboratories that produced imagery based on the above criteria. The 12 selected laboratories are as follows:

Robert McDermott
Historic Laboratories Exhibit Chair
Staff Scientist for Visualization
Center for High Performance Computing
University of Utah

The University of Utah

New York Institute of Technology

Cornell University

Brown University

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

California Institute of Technology

Pixar Animation Studios

Silicon Graphics, Inc.

Stanford University

Carnegie Mellon University

University of Washington

Microsoft Research

Laboratory principals provided names of contributors and selected their 12 most meaningful images and brief captions to represent their laboratory in the exhibit.

A richness of imagery has been assembled for this tribute that I know you will enjoy.